We need to improve flexibility in player jobs for end game...

[Colt47]

This is coming from years of doing the PF thing for end game and having to sit hours waiting for specific roles to fill in an end game event that requires practice. We need to be able to play multiple jobs in end game progression and we need to have systems that do not punish duplicated jobs.

Until we get to the .1 and .3 patches, gearing becomes insanely slow and also extremely swingy. People are clearing content to gear their "main job", and gearing secondary jobs takes way too long since all the effort goes to the main one. By the time the secondary job gets geared, it's already months down the line from the launch patch.

The other problem is that the system is awarding damage bonuses for having specific configurations in end game, and buffs from the same jobs can't stack, so it ends up pushing people to want one per role. At the very minimum, there should be no damage loss if someone goes for 3 melee dps and a caster or 3 casters and a melee. Depending on how things are balanced, there will always be certain jobs that are going to be preferred or just played a lot more. Trying to force people into playing a ranged DPS when they have incredibly low damage and only exist to give a 1% party wide damage buff from having the perfect party setup is just hiding a problem, not fixing it. (This is just an example... well okay they are kind of bad right now as of 6.1...)

People will still play melee dps even if the ranged do nearly the same damage. The fights right now have such monstrous hit boxes, you're practically a ranged dps when playing melee.

[SilverPanda]

I personally don't think that the party set up in pf is that bad, nor are most people that picky when it comes to role selection, are there pf's that do have 1 job per role, definitely, but I don't think it's that rampant that they would need to change the 1%. If the 1% wasn't there that would probably for those people who do pick 1 job per role to complete exclude range physical in their parties. There's already debates on if it's even worth bringing physical range in higher level content as it stands because of the low damage. Without that 1% buff why bring them when you can just bring 4 Reapers and just utterly destroy the boss or if up time is an issue just bringing 4 Casters. People are always going to try to have the best party set up when making pf, removing the 1% is just going to push it into another direction of exclusion.

[Colt47]

I personally don't think that the party set up in pf is that bad, nor are most people that picky when it comes to role selection, are there pf's that do have 1 job per role, definitely, but I don't think it's that rampant that they would need to change the 1%. If the 1% wasn't there that would probably for those people who do pick 1 job per role to complete exclude range physical in their parties. There's already debates on if it's even worth bringing physical range in higher level content as it stands because of the low damage. Without that 1% buff why bring them when you can just bring 4 Reapers and just utterly destroy the boss or if up time is an issue just bringing 4 Casters. People are always going to try to have the best party set up when making pf, removing the 1% is just going to push it into another direction of exclusion.

It's a problem that has been going on for years. Every expansion there's going to be popular and non-popular jobs, and while there is a need to have healers, tanks, and DPS to make a party function, there is no inherent need to have one ranged, two melee, and a caster as the dps setup. I understand why they originally did that but when we start getting to the point where we already have an option for one player per job, and then they put a system in that punishes not having a specific version of a role, it just makes it that much harder to get a group together on PF. If getting rid of this takes peoples wait time on PF trying to recruit down even by 20-30 minutes, that would be a far better benefit than whatever benefit this thing is giving.

I'm not saying eliminate one player per job, just the damage bonus system for the party should probably get reworked.

[TheSankaku]

Outside of week 1-2 Savage clears and Ultimates, where you need to push every single % of damage to optimise your odds of clearing, not having 2melee 1 ranged 1 magic isn't a problem. I have seen 3 caster clears on P4S. 3 or 4 melees is a little iffy but some fights can be done with 0 downtime. 2 ranged (typically 1 caster 1 ranged) is used because PF spreads usually cater for this.

The 1% is fine. Some players will stick to the standard comp, but it doesn't mean you have to if you have the capability to.